


eyes open

by apolliades



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), London Spy, SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Established Relationship, Fake Character Death, Fake Funeral, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, I dont, M/M, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Q's sad backstory, Wakes & Funerals, and you probably don't need to have watched london spy to understand it, know what to tag ! sorry, q is danny/danny is q, this is pretty .. ambiguous, we were all thinking it.............
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 01:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5187524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolliades/pseuds/apolliades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You aren’t the first boyfriend I’ve buried.”<br/>He says it slowly. The words are reluctant to come.<br/>“You aren’t the first MI6 agent I’ve buried, either.”</p><p>
  <i>Q attends bond's fake funeral, and suffers through reliving the last time he buried someone he loved. bond/london spy crossover.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	eyes open

“That was nice. Never thought I’d get to see my own funeral, really. Your reading was… touching.”

His hands are on Q’s waist, standing behind him, breath on his neck, before Q even realised he was in the room at all. He shivers, but doesn’t turn around, because his eyes are still red and his nose hurts from rubbing it so much, and he doesn’t want James to see.

“Did I see a few tears?”

“You really are a terrible bastard, 007. I hope you know that,” Q chides, only half way joking.

James must have heard something in his voice – he did still sound annoyingly sniffley – because his lips stilled on Q’s neck, where he’d been trailing kisses from just behind his ear to the skin just about his shirt collar.

“I know,” he murmurs, in no more than a whisper, “I know. Can you ever forgive me, darling?”

“I’m finding it awfully difficult,” Q lays his hands over James’ and runs his thumb over his tendons. “But I suppose I might. If you’re very nice to me.”

He’s trying his best to make light of it, to banter with him in the way they usually do. Usually, they’re all sly grins and raised eyebrows and sarcastic remarks – usually, Q hasn’t just watched a casket being lowered into the ground and spoken a eulogy for his boyfriend.

It’s just – it had reminded him so terribly, of –

_"I could never hurt him.”_

Q takes a deep breath in and realises James has been speaking to him. He blinks.

“– I promise, Q.”

He doesn’t want to ask James to repeat himself and let him know he’d spaced out so badly. He wonders what it is he’s just been promised. He supposes he’ll never know.

 _Nervous hands._   _The world’s most hesitant smile._ _He always looked surprised, when he smiled. Like he wasn’t sure what was happening to him._

The images are creeping faster into his head, now. There’s a slow dull throb starting up behind his temples.

“Q?”

Finally he turns, and puts a hand over James’ chest, finding his heartbeat. He feels his arms come up to encircle him and pull him closer. He feels his face in his hair and his mouth on the top of his head.

Q buries his face in James' neck and breathes in deeply. _He’s alive_ , _you idiot, he’s alive_ , he tells himself, but it’s not as comforting as he wants it to be. He wants to close his eyes, but he’s afraid that would just make the images worse.

It’s a little while before he can speak. James doesn’t say a word. Just holds him.

“Can we go to bed, please,” he murmurs against James’ shirt. The way he says it makes it unavoidably, depressingly clear that all he wants to do is go to bed and lie down, nothing more. He feels so drained suddenly, so exhausted. He feels like he’s dreaming.

_Anxious eyes, open underwater, closed under his lips. Open, staring, wide wide open –_

He feels the change in James’ posture that means he’s _serious_ now, that he’s registered that Q is not okay.

_“How is it that this person who I’ve never seen before … How are they the only person in the whole world who knows? That I’m not okay?”_

And he murmurs _yes, of course_ , close by his ear, and when he pulls away Q realises he’s been crying again, because James’ shirt is damp where his face has been. So much for him not seeing. He blinks, looks up, and takes a second for everything to come back into focus. He’s getting too lost in his head, too quickly. It’s frightening him a little.

It must be frightening James, too, because he’s looking at him like he knows something is wrong but can’t work out what. Q knows he hates being kept in the dark. He sighs, deep and weary. He’s been hoping this would never come up again, not with James. It’s probably mentioned somewhere in his personnel file, into which he has absolutely zero doubts that James has tried to hack – but he _is_ the Quartermaster, and his file is as un-hack-able as they come. That was one of the first things he made sure of when he took the job.

“I’m sorry, Q,” James tells him, and it’s one of the most sincere apologies he’s ever heard from that man’s mouth. “I didn’t realise it would upset you so much.”

Q shakes his head, slowly. “No. It’s not that.”

James frowns a little, his brows drawing together fractionally. Q reaches up and smooths his forehead with his thumb.

“I’m fine.” He says unconvincingly –

_“You don’t know me, but if you did, you’d know I’m always fine.”_

 – standing up to press a kiss to the side of James’ mouth. His stubble scratches at his lips, and it feels nice. It feels reassuring. He smiles, but it’s weak and watery, and his face is completely, utterly miserable. The images are coming far too fast, now, and it’s making his head ache.

 

They sit on the edge of the bed together. James’ face is lined with concern, and Q feels heavy. He can’t sit up straight; his shoulders weigh him down and make him curl in on himself. After a minute or two he gives up and lets himself flop back onto the mattress. After a second, James follows him.

“You –”

Q starts, and doesn’t know how to go on.

“I –”

He sighs. His head is almost pounding. He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. Everything is completely out of focus without them, but it’s nice. It’s like closing his eyes but without the inevitable flurry of flashbacks that he knows is coming now. He won’t be able to escape it.

God. Q really hates himself in that moment. This hasn’t happened in so long; he hasn’t felt like this in so fucking long.

His eyes are prickling again. He grits his teeth against it.

“You aren’t the first boyfriend I’ve buried.”

He says it slowly. The words are reluctant to come.

He can feel James’ gaze on the side of his face, but he stares determinedly at the ceiling. He doesn’t want to see his expression.

Q laughs softly, humourlessly. Because it is funny, really, isn’t it? Who else would this happen to – and twice?  

 _It’s not the same,_ he tries to tell himself, but he remains unconvinced.

“You aren’t the first MI6 agent I’ve buried, either.”

He hears the sharp, surprised sound of James’ inhale.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Q says, but it comes out a lot less hypothetical than he’d meant it to. It comes out broken and plaintive and pathetic.

“Q,” James says softly, probably because he doesn’t know what else to say. Q doesn’t blame him. Not even a little bit.

They lie there on an unfamiliar bed in a house that doesn’t belong to either of them and Q tells James about Alex. He tells him everything, eyes open, staring up with blurry vision at the dull cream ceiling. As he talks the flashbacks hit him hard, over and over with every blink. It makes his head and his heart thud, and his chest go tight, so it’s hard to breathe. When he reaches the part where he’d crept terrified into Alex’s attic and flicked open the clasps on that awful awful trunk his head spins even though he’s lying flat and the images get so real – it’s not even just images anymore, he can feel the warmth of the electric heater, hear the buzz of it, he can smell – oh _God_ , he can smell it –

_Eyes open, wide open, dead and staring and open—_

His voice breaks mid-word. His throat’s closing, he’s choking on that smell, oh God, that smell –

He almost thinks he’s there again, he almost gets lost, almost can’t tell what’s even real – until James’ hand closes tight around his, and the contact is like an electric shock, pulling him back into himself.

“It’s alright,” James tells him gently, and the edge of worry is there, plain in his voice, “You don’t have to tell me. You can stop.”

Q shakes his head and grinds his knuckles into his eyes. He’s crying again. God, he hates that. He’d thought he had shed all his tears for Alex a long time ago. But then, he’s not entirely sure who these tears are for.

“I want to,” he insists. “Can’t stop now. I’m hardly halfway through.” He pats around on the bed for his glasses and James puts them into his hand. “Could do with a bloody drink first, though.”

 

They root through the safe house’s cupboards until James produces a very dusty bottle of something dark with a label that’s half peeled off. He blows on it and makes Q cough.

He tells the rest of the story in between sips of whisky – the glass shakes in his hand, and there’s no use trying to hide it – leaning against the counter opposite James. Opposite, so he can look at him. If he keeps looking at him it makes it a little easier not to get lost in what isn’t real—anymore.

_“He works for MI6. He’s a spy.”_

At the time it had sounded so… far-fetched. Despite everything he’d seen, despite how it all, somehow, made perfect sense, and despite living within walking distance of Vauxhall Cross, hearing it out loud had sounded so strange. He hadn’t been able to believe it.

And now look at him. It really is almost laughable. His life is fucking unbelievable, and that isn’t always in a good way. More often than not, it isn’t, it seems.

When he finishes the story he tells James about the flashbacks. He tells him how many months he’d gone sleepless, kept awake by images of that face in that trunk, the stink of it. He tells him everything until there’s nothing left, and by the end of it he feels so empty, and not much lighter for it. That doesn’t seem fair.

“There you go,” Q says, when at last he reaches the end. He tips back the last of his whisky and holds out his glass for a refill. “My tragic, mysterious backstory.”

James looks at him in a way he never has done before. It’s not pity. Sympathy, maybe. Q isn’t quite sure he likes it. He feels raw.

“Darling, I’m sorry.”

That’s what you say, isn’t it? When there aren’t any words left. When you don’t know what the fuck else to say.

“Don’t,” Q murmurs into his glass.

“Sorry,” James smiles half-heartedly. It doesn’t touch his eyes. “Is there anything I can do?”

Q half laughs to himself, and puts his glass down, and rubs at his face. His cheeks are damp again and the salt is making his skin feel dry and his eyes are stinging. He wants to wash his face.

“You could kiss me, if you want.”

James closes the space between them in a single stride and does so. He holds Q’s face in his hands and kisses him open mouthed and slow and with just enough pressure to say _I’m here._ He kisses confidently and his stubble scratches Q’s mouth, and the skin of his hands is a little rough, trigger-worn, and it’s nothing like kissing Alex, not at all. He’s nothing like Alex.

When they break apart Q is breathless and hot. He exhales slowly and looks into James’ bright blue eyes. He’s never seen such blue eyes in his life. If he didn’t know James as he does he might nearly suspect him of wearing contacts.

“I can’t bury you again,” he says. He puts his hands on either side of James’ face and runs his fingers over his skin. It’s familiar and comforting and it grounds him. “Don’t make me.”

James pulls him close again so he’s speaking by the curve of his ear. So he’s not looking him in the eye, anymore – Q pushes the thought out of his mind.

“I won’t,” he breathes, soft and sincere, “Never.”

Q decides to believe him, for now, because it makes him feel better. He doesn’t ask James to promise. He doesn’t want to make him lie.

**Author's Note:**

> i think i'm the second person to be posting fic for london spy haha. but honestly watching it felt like watching a 00Q fanfic.. right in front of my eyez. i hope this is ok! i hope i characterised everyone well enough. i'm still getting acquainted with q & 007\. if the stuff about alex seems a bit vague that's because. well. only the first episode of london spy has aired. who knows what's going to happen there. anyway it's very early in the morning. enjoy !


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